Modern society is witnessing a shift towards solid state lighting applications such as LED applications. Such applications have improved longevity and superior energy consumption characteristics compared to traditional light sources such as incandescent and halogen light sources. One such an application domain is outdoor lighting, where traditionally HPS and HIS lamps have been used to illuminate outdoor areas, e.g. public outdoor areas such as streets, squares, motorways and so on.
In some jurisdictions such as the US, such lighting devices are required to produce a lighting distribution of a particular shape at least in the horizontal plane, such as the Dark Sky standard in the US, which defines a number of different light distributions (e.g. Type I-V light distributions). These different light distributions for instance are to facilitate meeting different residents' requirements regarding outdoor light distributions in the vicinity of their place of residency. In order to achieve the different light distributions, luminaries are typically fitted with reflectors or specially designed optical structures.
For such outdoor lighting applications, there usually are no standards to control glare experienced by users of the outdoor areas, e.g. drivers and pedestrians. However, with the influx of SSL devices that tend to generate different types of luminous distributions compared to traditional counterparts such as HPS or HID lamps, there is an increasing demand for glare control for SSL devices for outdoor lighting applications, for instance to provide more comfortable light distributions for pedestrians, and safer light distributions for drivers. This may be achieved by providing optical elements in luminaries, e.g. over the SSL elements to shape their luminous output in a vertical plane. However, such solutions typically need to be tailored to specific applications or locations as the optical shaping of the luminous distribution typically is a function of the orientation in which the SSL devices are fitted in the luminaries.
There is therefore a need for a SSL device for outdoor lighting applications that can be configured to produce different light distributions, e.g. at least some of the light distributions of the US Dark Sky standard, and that provides better glare control.
US2013/0128565A1 discloses light fixture comprising lighting panels hingedly connected and reconfigurable between area lighting and spot lighting. However, it is not for replacement of HPS or HID lamps.